STAFF EDITORIAL: East of Eden

Patrons of the East Campus hotel were surprised to discover over the summer that the hotel no longer existed. The space on the sixth floor has been allocated to 34 incoming first-years. The result is a prickly situation for everyone: campus administrators must now defend the sudden change; the hotel's patrons were denied affordable, comfortable, and accessible lodgings; and the first-years, no matter how much they like the palatial rooms and panoramic views, are isolated from their comrades on South Lawn.

There are two problems with the housing change. First, the scenario brings into focus the more abstruse depredations of the policy of Enlargement and Enhancement, or, as it has been nicknamed, Enlargement and Enlargement—the program to expand the size of Columbia College and increase tuition over six years. At present, the spin is that the first-years living in East Campus are there not because of a larger incoming class, but rather because fewer students canceled housing contracts over the summer.

But a larger class size is the culprit in either scenario, as Enlargement and Enlargement is an ongoing process that has deeply affected the University and the surrounding community. It is a simple fact that an expressed determination to increase the number of College students might lead to a lack of places where these students could live. The lesson to draw is that any inconvenience caused by the hotel closure could have been avoided.

Spectator understands that Student Affairs and Student Services had little choice but to close the East Campus hotel and fill it with first-years, but the manner in which the transition occurred was ham fisted at best. And therein lies the second problem with the new policy: The East Campus hotel was more than a place to stay for visiting parents; it was a community resource. Travelers, parents, visiting professors, and distinguished guests used the space, and their added presence enlivened the Columbia community. Now luminaries such as these will flock downtown to the Waldorf, the Plaza, and the Belvedere—unless, of course, they decide to stay at the youth hostel on 103rd Street.

In some cases, people who had already booked rooms at the hotel were told that their reservations were void and that they would have to find other accommodations. It does the administration no good that the change was communicated in such a sorry way: Some patrons of the hotel did not discover that they had no room until days before their planned departure.

So the University community is left in a situation that is, in some ways, quite amusing. It would not be unusual for upperclass students to think that the University was on a mission to deny them quality housing. After seeing Furnald transferred to first-years, sophomores, juniors and seniors now have to live with first-years occupying the venerable redoubt of East Campus.

The administration should take greater care to communicate changes in living space allocations and regulations to the student body, and to the Columbia community at large. A little more care never hurt anybody.